Watching as the truck grew larger in his field of vision, Ryan turned just a split-second before the front end of the truck would have scraped the front end of his bike. The truck passed close enough to his right that he could have reached out and touched it if he’d been so inclined. Not wanting to have his fingertips cut off, Ryan didn’t bother trying to test that little hypothesis.

When he heard the unmistakable sound of grinding, shifting gears coming from behind him, Ryan glanced in his left rear-view mirror. Sure enough, there was the truck again, just starting a slow turn and coming back around for him.

+I’ll keep that in mind. Just remember: I’m here if you ever decide you do want to talk about things.+

Ryan, grinning slightly insanely as he saw the car bearing down on them, had decided that the best way to get that damned truck off their backs was to put something almost the same size between the two vehicles. The guy in the car was shouting abuse at him, and if Ryan had cared he might have taken the time to yell some of his own.

+Sho. Lean. Now!+

Not waiting for Sho’s acknowledgment, since he knew that his passenger would do what he wanted – either before or after Ryan’s head slammed into his nose – Ryan lunged backwards. As the bike’s forward wheel started tipping skyward, Ryan felt Sho leaning back behind him. Ryan just hoped that his luck was going to hold out, since this crazy little move was going to take a lot of it.

Good luck and good timing—the same as most of his more audacious stunts had taken. Not to mention good planning, but that wasn’t so much a factor here as it had been when he’d he’s actually had the time to make a plan. Lunging forward when his front wheel had cleared the hood of the car, Ryan rode up and over the windshield, across the roof, and down off the trunk. Laughing, slightly insanely, slightly triumphantly, Ryan twisted his throttle open and roared off, confident that he’d made good his escape.

That confidence lasted until he heard the loudest, most aggressively unpleasant crashing noise that he’d ever heard. Even the ones in Speed had nothing on this. Turning to look behind him, Ryan saw that the car he’d leapt over was now a twisted wreck.

"Well that ain’t good," Ryan muttered, already starting to search for some other way to get the nutbars in the truck off his back.

It was going to be one hell of a challenge to find something that would be able to keep those guys away when they were willing to ram a car out of their way just to get to him and Sho. But maybe finding something bigger to stick in between the two vehicles wasn’t quite the way to go. Maybe it wasn’t a bigger obstacle he needed to put between him and the truck, but a lot more distance.

Looking around, Ryan smiled slightly; he was just coming up on one of the rare overpasses in this part of the city. With a little doing and a whole lot of luck, it probably would be possible to put enough distance between himself and his unwanted pursuers to make them give up chasing him entirely. Sho’d said that these Chronos types didn’t give up, but then they’d probably never met anyone like him before.

Just as they made it to the middle of the overpass, Ryan spotted the car. It had a nice, shiny white paintjob, which meant that the owner probably wasn’t going to be happy with him for doing what he was about to. But then, he didn’t know the owner, and the fact that there was a huge truck bearing down with the intent to crush him and Sho into bloody paste with metal bits made it really hard for Ryan to even pretend to care about something like that.

Popping another wheelie and narrowly avoiding smacking Sho in the face with the back of his head, Ryan rode diagonally over the hood of the car and flew over the railing of the overpass.

+I will,+ Sho said, still sounding a bit shaken.

When the dirtbike slammed into the roadway, Ryan and Sho both worked in tandem to right it again. Knowing that it would be easier for the guys in the truck to find him if he came right out the other side of the overpass, Ryan turned a sharp U and shot out from under the opposite side. Since they’d no doubt be looking for him to come out on the right, where he’d jumped off the overpass, they’d probably get a fair distance into the city before they managed to realize that he’d done no such thing.

XxXxX

"I don’t believe this!" Delcasse snarled, slamming on the brakes so hard that for a second Razell was half afraid that his foot would punch a hole in the truck’s floor. "Jumping the car was crazy enough, but that?!"

"Calm down, D. We’ll call some of the others, and they’ll help us catch up to that little stuntman wannabe," Razell said, trying to calm down his fellow Zoanoid. "I’d better report in to His Excellency and call for some backup."

Hearing Delcasse’s grumbled agreement, in addition to some grumbled obscenities, Razell turned to the comm setup on the dashboard. "This is Razell, reporting in, Your Excellency."

"What is it, Razell?" The deep voice of Lord Imakarum Mirabilis echoed back over the comm.

"We’re still in pursuit of the escaped human, Your Excellency, but you’re not going to believe what he just did."

"What is it?"

"Well, he kinda just jumped the railing of the overpass we’re on."

"He did what?" Lord Imakarum’s voice was soft and flat and deadly and brimming with all sorts of unspoken threats that only a Zoalord could really convey.

And not just any Zoalord, either—the only other Zoalord that Razell knew of who could express those kinds of wordless threats with any kind of success was Dr. Balkus, and he was just really damn scary from the get-go. Lord Imakarum’s face – gentle and obviously Japanese, while still being average-looking as far as Razell was concerned – could catch you kind of off-guard when he started getting all intense and scary. He just didn’t look the type to do something like that.

And that was the really scary part.